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Online car sales | Why we still need a human touch

Big names in the world of commerce are big for, normally, good reasons. Virgin? Good at selling holidays. Google? Good at finding answers to every question ever asked and recorded by man. Tesco? Good at selling food, drink and more recently, mobile phone coverage (sorry Virgin).

What, however, these names in particular are not so hot at is the selling of cars. It may have escaped your notice (it did ours for the most part), but their attempted foray onto the online forecourt wasn’t the next ominous threat to any online or physical car provider. We can appreciate how this retrospective news would sound; even as the UK’s leading online car finance provider we know that if one of these three names had managed to get their foot in the dealership door, we wouldn’t have been able to compete. But they didn’t. And so here we still are.

The human element

Competition though is everywhere. Whether it’s undercutting on car prices or having a slick and sexy website, there will always be something that you wish you’d thought of or done better. While we’re not quite ready to stand shoulder to shoulder with our direct competitors just yet (you know who you are), we will say this as fellow online brokers: we’re collectively doing a fine job of cornering the online car finance marketplace.

So the question you may ask at this point is: How? Well, apart from having solid relationships with a great number of dealers and lenders, we’ve got something that no business can ever do without: people.

As ‘online’ as we are, we’ve taken time to recruit and nurture some of the most highly skilled, knowledgeable and committed team of people on the south coast. And we can say that without them, we would find it incredibly tough to still be in business today; you can’t build a trusting relationship and experience the same level of excellent customer service with just a website.

Trekking the Amazon

A lofty opinion? Not really. Let’s look at another global name that’s been busy kicking tyres on a small patch on online land - Amazon. Yes, really; the seemingly one-stop-shop for tech, books and now apparently cars are trying to get on the bandwagon with us.

Or are they? A recent article detailed all the great things that Amazon Vehicles can do for consumers - except you can’t actually buy a car from them. And that’s a bit of an issue in today’s online and ever-connected world. Amazon say that their platform makes it easy for consumers to get all the information they need when looking for a vehicle. That might be so, but us here at Creditplus are ahead of this game: we can provide all of this for our customers, as well as actually finding and supplying the car itself. And in its actual physical form right outside your door; not just a thumbnail image on a screen.

Getting real

As much as searching for a car takes one man and his laptop (and not a lot of human intervention at this point), it’s the actual ‘realness’ of buying a car - or a car finance agreement - from an online provider such as ourselves that requires our team of humans to advise, assist and, in some cases, reassure the customer that their journey from beginning to end will be a smooth, easy ride.

We’re able to provide a number of lending options that suit lifestyles and wallets, we’re open and transparent about what we can and can’t lend, and we can provide enough information to research the car you really want. Our customers can do all this with us (with or without one of our customer advisors if they want), and then they can apply. And that’s the bit you don’t get with any of the ‘big’ names out there trying to do the same thing.

Amazon Vehicles talk about their ‘automotive community’ and being a ‘car research destination’, and they’re both things we agree with, mostly because we’re doing the same thing. Only, in our humble opinion, better.

The full car buying package

If we haven’t made it crystal clear, you can get the full car finance and car buying package from us. We know that people want to spend less of their precious free time trekking around dealerships and getting on the phone researching endless quotes for car finance. So we know that the internet is the best place for us; everything you need is but a mere click away and, if you want a person to give you a guiding hand, we’re on the end of the phone. You’re doing all the hard work after all; we’re just providing support.

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